The Goodbye
by balthazor66
Summary: Harry's POV. This happens just after the graduation day of Harry and the other seven years from Hogwarts. Harry approached Draco just by the side of the lake at Hogwarts grounds for one last time to bide him good-bye, but in the end, Draco was the one who


Just a HARRY POTTER fanfiction…

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THE GOODBYE

By: balthazor66, 2004

Rating: PG-13

Category: Romance

Pairing: Harry Potter / Draco Malfoy

Warning:. Well, just in case you haven't realized, this story contains a boy-to-boy relationship… you know what to do if you don't like this kind of story… so long!

Synopsis: Harry's POV. This happens just after the graduation day of Harry and the other seven years from Hogwarts. Harry approached Draco just by the side of the lake at Hogwarts grounds for one last time to bide him good-bye, but in the end, Draco was the one who greeted him farewell first. Reviews, please!

Feedback: I just wanna say that… what a lovely pairing, Harry and Draco, don't you agree? Oh yeah, I sincerely hope that dear Mrs. Rowling will make this two mortal enemies as lovers in her next Harry Potter books, though I know it will never happen even until the end of the century. gotta remind myself not to put my hopes up too high!

Disclaimer: The characters in this fanfiction, either featured or mentioned, do not belong to me. I don't own them, at all, and I'm so incredibly furious about that . This fanfic does belong to me, though. Anyway, enjoy! And don't forget to give your reviews!

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I forced out a weak, twisted smile as countless of togas began to fly in the air, filling the surroundings like huge, black-colored raindrops falling from the ceiling, right after Dumbledore announced that everyone in the room had officially graduated from Hogwarts. I clutched my own toga, then bent my head down as to hide my sorrowful face and to bury them beneath thousands of happy ones all around me.

I looked at myself in desperation. Wearing a gleaming black robe embedded with the lion of Gryffindor on the chest part, I felt a sudden rush of sadness crawling up my body. This was the last time I would be wearing this robe, because I wasn't a student of Hogwarts any longer. At a furious speed I took the robe off, then let it dangle on my left shoulder, leaving me wearing a maroon-colored sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.

The noise was deafening my ears. I looked around, scanning the crowd, hoping to at least get a glimpse of his white-blond hair mingling somewhere among others, but my efforts were useless. I stood on the tip of my toes, giving myself a slightly higher view, yet I still couldn't manage to spot him.

My heart gave a painful jolt as my head overflowed with anguish.

I wanted to say good-bye to him, for one last time.

"Harry! Oh, thank goodness we finally found you!"

I turned around to find Ron and Hermione standing behind me, beaming while covering their heads with their hands. Ron had also taken off his robe and by then was struggling to tie it around his hips, while Hermione's was nowhere to be seen. It was a sure thing that she had managed to transfer her robe in a magical way into her already-packed trunk, but there was no need of me to ask her again about how she did it. It had to be another one of her brilliant tricks of spells.

"Come on, let's go outside, shall we?" Ron yelled at the top of his lungs, trying to overcome the unbearable noise of clamors all around. "Staying here in the middle of this crazy crowd's driving me nuts! And those raining togas are banging my head."

I nodded weakly as an answer. Hermione instantly took me by the hand, then dragged me out of the bustling Great Hall to outside the castle. I followed without complaint and complied to whenever she was taking me to, several times dodging flying togas that soared right onto my face as I straggled behind her.

A soft breeze greeted my face when I arrived outside the castle. Hermione let go of my hand, then stretched out her own pair, closing her eyes while bellowing happily, "We've graduated from Hogwarts! We've finished the seven years of hard work, at last! Woo-hoo!"

"Bloody hell, we did it!" Ron continued with a no-less loud voice. "YEAH, WE DID IT!!"

He tossed his own toga up onto the air before catching it back with a jump. He repeated it for a few more times, laughing his head off, his flaming-red hair bouncing along with every jump he took.

I took a deliberate good look at Ron, then at Hermione, but at the same time, I felt like I was going to just get down to my knees and cry my heart out at that instant moment. A horrible feeling of imagining them not being my best friends anymore outside school haunted my mind, and the sudden surge of loss filled my head as precious memories I had shared with them flashed in and out of my mind, completely bringing me to the verge of tears. But I didn't want to cry; especially not in front of them.

Instead, I buried my hands into the side-pockets of my jeans, my lips unconsciously slipping out an audible sigh as I did so. Hermione turned her face at me, then asked in her familiar concerned tone, "Harry? Are you okay?"

I stared down at my feet, not daring to look at her in the eye to hide my own pair of teary ones. "Me? Y-yeah, I'm fine, why?"

"Well, it's just not usual seeing you all quiet like this," she said. "Especially not in such a special day like today."

"Yeah, you call today a special day, don't you?" I muttered, a bit of hostility slipping in my tone as I spoke. "Yeah, it's very special, very _fucking_ special, apart from the fact that after this you're all going to leave me alone and have your own life…"

"Of course we will not, Harry!" Ron denied abruptly, turning his eyes on me as well. "We'll be seeing each other again, sure thing that is! Oh, come on now, mate, what makes you think that way? What happened to you?"

I shook my head precariously, starting to walk down the stairs heading to the grounds. "Whatever."

I made my way down the stone staircases hastily, followed by Hermione and Ron behind me as I walked. I knew very well that being hostile to them like this wasn't going to help reduce my sorrow at all; it would make things worse instead. Yet, being such a selfish, egoistic, self-centered teenager, I couldn't help it.

"Harry! Harry, wait up, we're not finished with you yet!" Hermione beckoned in an extremely worried tone.

I took a deep breath, but didn't stop walking. "Don't follow me, you two, please," I said sharply to her without looking back.

Hermione didn't give up. "B-but Harry, we can't just--"

"JUST SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE, WILL YOU?!" I yelled at her furiously, only to find myself regretting it at once.

The two paused in hearing me shouting at them.

I turned around to see their shocked faces looking aghast, then heaved out a sigh. "Look, I'm sorry for shouting at you two, but--can you guys just leave me alone now? I really need some time to think alone right now," I said in a thoroughly exasperated way.

Herman hesitated for a moment after she finally gave a faint nod. "But promise us you won't get yourself into trouble, alright?" she said.

I forced out a twisted smile. "I'll try," I replied dryly, turning around to continue walking, steadily leaving the two farther away behind me.

I wandered aimlessly around the Hogwarts grounds for a moment with my robe still hanging loose on my shoulder, letting the cool air of the afternoon to penetrate into my frenzied mind to calm it down. My hazel eyes skimmed through the magnificent scenery situated all around me, silently admiring them, as I came into a halt just near the lake.

I gave a tiny thought of wondering how my life would be like outside Hogwarts, and my senses gave way to the painful idea.

I rubbed my eyes as a tear came rolling down from them. How I would miss this beautiful scenery once I'd been out of this area…

My vision moved and drifted off for a while before finally resting on a figure of someone standing all by himself by the side of the lake. I narrowed my eyes to get a better look, gasping in shock at what I saw.

The blond hair that shone brilliantly under the afternoon sunlight made me recognize who he was right away.

No, it couldn't be… but there was no way of mistaking him…

Draco Malfoy.

The only person I was longing to meet after the graduation, for one last time.

He was wearing a dark-colored shirt with a pair of also dark-colored trousers, while his Slytherin robe lay motionless on the ground beside him. His back was on me, and I could easily tell that he was deep in melancholy thoughts, just like me, since while standing without moving a muscle, he constantly flung little stones into the lake, making them bounce a few times on the surface of the clear water before drowning themselves down into the base of the lake.

I began to walk towards him, trampling the grass below my feet so that it made a smooth rasping sound every time I stomped on them. My heart was banging ever so violently against my chest, so hard and fast it started to hurt. An unexpected surge of nervousness rushed into me, making me tremble slightly at the thought of it. With every step I took, and as I got nearer and nearer to him, I felt an insurgent emotion I couldn't understand forcing its way out of me, but I tried to ignore it, focusing my attention in my attempt.

He turned around, facing me directly, when I was only a few steps ahead to a position beside him. I froze in an instant, my brain seeming to stop working in a fraction of a second, making me unable to think of what to do.

His lips formed a slow smirk. "Well, well, well, if it isn't our famous Potter," he sneered, tilting his head to one side while his eyes caught mine so quickly I hadn't got time to look away. "What are you doing here, if I may ask?"

I couldn't answer. My mouth was totally dry, flabbergasted in seeing this gorgeous form of a teenager standing right in front of me.

I just stared at him without a word instead, my hazel eyes never breaking contact with his gray ones.

"Lost for words, are you, Potter?" he said coldly, lifting his eyebrows. "I'm not surprised, honestly, considering your pathetic ability to even, well, _realize_ who you actually are compared to a person like me."

I clenched my fist, anger building up throughout my body. Yet, at the same time, I could also feel a longing passion to him from the inside of me.

Somehow, his utter arrogance was what I liked the most from him.

Silence fell between us for a precious minute, and neither of us shifted from our position. Our eyes were locked into each other's in an indescribable way, so weird that I strangely felt him staring at me with such the same message as I was trying to pass on to him.

A message that expressed how much he meant to me.

"We've spent seven years of war, haven't we?" he asked rhetorically. "We've endured our years at Hogwarts with envy, jealousy, and extreme hatred, haven't we. Potter?"

I barely nodded as an answer.

He smirked. "How foolish the two of us have been, then, " he said, "for wasting such a long period of precious time with nothing but _useless loathing_."

He lifted his eyebrows, but I merely gave a response to his statement. Inside me I could feel my heart beginning to beat even more furiously.

All of a sudden, Draco broke the eye contact, then advanced forward, folding his arms in front of his chest casually. He ambled past me and began to circle around me in an incredibly slow pace as if he endured his every step thoughtfully. "You know, Potter, it's funny when you think about it," he muttered. "For me, leaving Hogwarts is actually nothing worthwhile to be thought of. I don't feel like wanting to stay longer here at all; the outside world is waiting, to be explored and demystified, so why bother locking myself up inside this--_boring_--castle any longer?"

He caught my eye once again, this time even more unpredictably and swiftly. "But, guess what, Potter," he continued with a less cold tone, "there is something inside the school that, in ways I can't even understand, has made me think the other way around."

"What do you mean?" I asked him, puzzled.

He snorted. "Oh, come on, Potter, let your brain work," he said sarcastically. "You know what I mean, don't you? Or are you such a lamentable slow-thinker that I should talk to you with a tone that resembles, well, _babies_, maybe?"

"Shut up, Malfoy," I growled, trying to look as ignorant as possible while my mind kept on replaying his last sentence again and again, trying to comprehend what he was trying to say when he stated it.

Draco laughed. "Manners, Potter, watch out for your selection of words," he said, still with the same tough tone.

"You're the one who gotta watch out," I murmured, glaring at him threateningly. "Now that we're no longer students, no rules are hindering us, and I must warn you to be careful not to mess up with me, or you'll soon regret it."

Beyond, my expectation, his laughs became louder. "Wow, shaky, now, aren't we?" he said, smiling meaningfully. "But that's what I like from you, actually; your ungovernable temper, and your shining charisma of rebellious nature."

It took me a few seconds before my mind could finally make out what he meant by that. "Wh-what the--?"

"Well, Potter, I don't understand why your brain works so tediously at this kind of occasion," he drew even nearer to me, who was still very much speechless. "Don't you get it?"

Regretfully, I shook my head, hoping that what I had hypothesized about the meaning of his words had been wrong.

He heaved a thoughtful sigh. He looked at me in the eye, stretched out his right hand, touched my face softly with the back of his fingers, then whispered, "I love you."

The effect of those three words that came out of his mouth completely paralyzed me. My jaw dropped open, and somehow I could feel the world starting to spin around me.

I couldn't believe my ears. Maybe I wasn't hearing right.

My God, was I?

Draco's handsome face was now barely an inch from mine, so near that I could feel his scented breaths perfuming my nose. He smiled sweetly; a smile I hadn't ever seen him show during our seven years of cold war. He grasped the back of my neck, blinked a few times, then mouthed, "Do you?"

The last wall of my defense was shattered when I looked deeply in his glimmering eyes that seemed to be full of love. I couldn't lie to my feelings any longer.

Nodding faintly, I finally let the words escaped my mouth.

"I love you too," I whispered with a profound smile.

Draco nodded as a response. Grinning charmingly, he locked his lips onto mine in a passionate kiss.

I gave in to his total control and paid him back with all I was worth.

Those seven years of hatred, jealousy, and war completely dissolved and disappeared at this instant moment, when we kissed.

I loved him, with all my heart and soul, and I knew it was true.

Suddenly, he broke the kiss, then gave me one last loving stare before pulling himself away from me. He bent down, took his robe, dangling it over his shoulder, combed his blonde hair with his fingers in all his charming beauty, then started to walk away from me.

He patted my back when he walked past me, then turned around before muttering, "Goodbye."

I grabbed his hand, my eyes now welling with tears. "B-but why?"

His lips curled into a melancholy smile. "We'll meet again someday if the Powers that Be destines us to," he muttered. "But now, we have to be parted."

I was lost for words. The shock of hearing him say goodbye to me was too overwhelming to bear.

Draco's gray gems didn't move as he repeated forcefully, "Goodbye."

I released my grip on his hand unwillingly, biting my lips to hold back the tears that were flooding my eyes. He gave me one last smile, then turned around and walked away.

I gazed at him, tears gushing down my cheek with every step he took.

I wanted to run, to speed up my steps so that I could prevent him from going, but somehow my feet wouldn't obey my command.

I didn't move even until he was out of sight, but then, as the last bit of him disappeared far in front of me, the last bit of strength that had been present in me fled, and I fell on my knees to the ground, crying my heart out as I did so.

I looked at the crystal-clear lake in agony, recalling just a moment ago, when he was still throwing rocks into it graciously, only to find my heart being broken to even smaller pieces as memories of him overflowed my head, totally devastating me.

I loved him, for all I was worth, but why did he have to go?

But then, as I wallowed in the torturous sorrow all on my own, I remembered his last sentence he said before he bade me farewell.

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""We'll meet again someday if the Powers that Be destines us to…"

I would hold on to that promise from now on.

He would come back to me, someday, I believed in that.

I lifted my head up to the golden-colored afternoon sky, and, while imagining his handsome face smiling at me from above, I had smiled between my sobs.

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We would meet again, wouldn't we, my love? I asked silently to his imaginary silhouette above me.

I'd wait for that time to come, now matter how long it would take for me to see him again.

Goodbye…

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PS: Gaah! Finally done! I thought the whole idea for this story is kind of original, isn't it? Forgive me if it isn't! Anyway, thanks for reading, and don't forget, as always, to give your reviews regarding this fic! Thanks a million!


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